But when her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers. And when they had brought them to the magistrates, they said, “These men are Jews, and they are disturbing our city.” Acts 16:19, 20
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Some people are just exploitative by nature. They take advantage of people by every available means. Drug pushers, for example, and pimps. Slum lords, those who employ illegal aliens, owners and employers who do not give equal pay for equal work. Abortionists. Teachers who prey on students for sexual favors. Coaches who bully their players just because they can. Husbands who abuse their wives. Parents who use their children for their own selfish purposes. People who look down on the poor and homeless or who manipulate politicians for their personal or professional ends.
The list goes on. You can take this to the bank: the Gospel of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, with its call for mercy and justice, is going to trouble greatly those who get their kicks in life exploiting others.
We can almost weep for this little Philippian girl. Here she is, possessed by some kind of spiritual power that gives her a unique gift of being able to tell the future. She is “owned” by others, so she was probably a slave of some sort, and who knows what other favors were being exacted from her when she wasn’t making money for her exploiters by her little prophetic antics.
We might get the impression that she was irritating to Paul. Why didn’t she just leave him and Silas alone? Why did she have to advertise their business to everyone within earshot? But the text makes it clear it’s not this little girl that troubled Paul. It was her primary exploiter, the spirit of divination – called by the Greeks, python (what does say about its hold on this little girl?) – that really troubled Paul and made him angry.
In the Name of Jesus Christ Paul broke the exploiter’s hold on this child’s soul, and he shattered her human exploiters’ pecuniary interests, landing him in jail, having been beaten severely. Do we want to chastise Paul for being “insensitive” to these entrepreneurs? If he’d just kept his mouth shut and minded his own business – been a little more tolerant – he wouldn’t have “disturbed the whole city.” Of course we do not fault the apostle. The Gospel is an offense to every kind of exploiter, and it wouldn’t be the Gospel, bringing liberty and life to all who believe, if that were not the case.
We proclaim Good News that sets men free, and everywhere exploitation and oppression exist, they who know the Truth of the Gospel must proclaim it in all its soul-freeing, life-transforming power, without compromise or apology. Will people get upset? Be troubled? Might not their trouble redound on us? Indeed. So let it be.
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